Comment
Charles Onyango-Obbo
There's a Mbeki who's been making headlines in South Africa in recent weeks. And it's not President Thabo Mbeki, but his brother Moeletsi. The younger Mbeki, deputy president of South Africa's Institute of International Affairs, made world headlines when he said Africans were better off under colonialism. "The average African is poorer [today] than during the age of colonialism," he said, accusing Africa's post-colonial rulers of wasting their nations' resources. Moeletsi criticises his brother for canoodling with Zimbabwe's cruel ruler Robert Mugabe, and is unimpressed with his black economic empowerment programme, which he says is creating a destructive "culture of entitlement" among blacks. Asked to explain his criticism of big brother, Moeletsi says he's actually proud of Thabo's achievements, but adds: "I don't get my opinions from him and he doesn't get his from me. And the South Africa government is not a family business."
Moeletsi isn't the only person to have made these comments, but he's certainly the first close relative of an African president to do so in recent times. That made the comments more newsworthy, because the tradition in Africa is that the brothers, sisters, wives and other relatives of the Big Man don't disagree with him. They usually sit at the head of the gravy train, and in the first row of the choir singing his praises. Of all the things Moeletsi said, however, the most disturbing were his remarks about Nigeria. Moeletsi pointed out that, in the past 20 years, China has pulled 400 million of its citizens out of poverty. Over the same period, Nigeria has pushed nine million into poverty! Depressing, considering that Nigeria is the world's seventh largest exporter of oil. Moreover, because of the high premium on its sweet crude in world markets, by the end of the year Nigeria's oil revenues will be the third highest in the world, at $27 billion, behind Saudi Arabia at $91.7 billion and Iran at $27.5 billion.
Nigeria, like many other mineral-rich African countries, particularly DR Congo, has suffered a very acute case of the "Dutch disease." The phenomenon was first observed in the Netherlands in the 1960s, when large reserves of natural gas were first exploited, and the country seemed to deindustrialise. Usually, a country's currency rises (making its other export goods less competitive), imports increase, and productivity falls. Other economists use the term to refer to when a country that makes a rich mineral find soon ceases to be creative, stops working, and waits to feed on the easy pickings. Moeletsi seems to be vindicated by the fact that Nigeria's most influential export to the rest of Africa today is not oil, but something the government doesn't have anything to do with and that doesn't occur naturally in the country's soil - cinema.
Nigeria's soaps are the new rage on most African TVs. Nollywood, as it's called, has become the third largest in the world, after India's Bollywood and the USA's Hollywood, with a turnover of over 2,000 low-budget films per year. According to an insightful account on the BBC, the Nollywood "stories tend to be quite simple but very dramatic and heavy on the emotions: the women wail and are avaricious money lovers; the men are just as emotional and very vengeful. Throw in a gibbering bone-rattling juju man and Bible-waving preacher and what you have is a brew of conflict, revenge, trials and tribulations - the likes of which are keeping most Zambians, especially in the capital city, Lusaka, glued to TV screens for hours on end." The movies are mainly financed by merchants and traders. But it will be a long time before Nollywood becomes a multibillion dollar industry. Just like the corruption that has ruined African economies, Nollywood's fortunes are being siphoned off by video pirates. In other words, this vast industry is being robbed because of the state's failure to enforce copyright laws. Wipe out Nigeria, and write in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, and the story is the same. Makes you wish every African president had a Moeletsi for a younger brother.
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